Application Transformation For The Cloud: Understanding Workloads

When C-level technology executives make decisions about cloud services, what drives their decision making? In a past blog, I noted that CIOs seem much more concerned about how to deliver IT as a service (ITaaS) to the business faster and more transparently than they are about cloud infrastructure. And in my conversations with them, they all talked about over hauling the structure and processes of their organizations—and the need to build or attract new skill sets. But once all that is done or well underway, there is one more set of decisions that need to be made: what applications are best suited for which cloud model—public, private or hybrid cloud.

Aligning workloads for the most suitable cloud model, and then enabling them for mobile access, Big Data analytics, user and desktop virtualization and personalization. Those are decisions with far reaching implications. And you can’t make those decisions without understanding the workloads. Workloads are dynamic and they will need to be adapted to future demands.

For example, consider all the legacy, 2nd platform applications that still run most businesses today:
SAP,
Oracle,
Microsoft,
IBM—and the customizations and integrations that connect or enhance them. If you’re transitioning to the cloud, which is much more mobile enabled, virtualized, and self-service—a different business model—how do you square that with these business critical apps that live on premise? Companies spinning up now like Uber can build everything from scratch to take advantage of the cloud—the 3rd platform. They’re running their businesses from an iPhone. But what about everyone else?

For one thing, there's so much data that sits in legacy apps that needs to be accessed even if they’re re-architected for a cloud-based infrastructure. These applications need to be able to work and coexist with your next-generation, 3rd platform apps because there will be critical integration points between the two. You can’t just flip a switch and go from 100 percent legacy apps and infrastructure to 100 percent cloud-based social mobile apps. It's just unrealistic.

These legacy applications are going to exist for years, maybe even another decade, and they’re foundational to your business. They need to operate and run with these 3rd platform applications. You've got to go through an application modernization process to make that happen. It may just be in a new type of infrastructure that allows you to more easily direct connect to these 3rd platform apps. But that’s where application modernization and application transformation come together.

And the timeline is compressed. We operated in the mainframe era, platform 1 for 10 or 15 years. Then another 10 to 15 years with platform two. But this 3rd platform is instant on. People talk today about the fact that our industry is changing. And I say, no, the industry's already changed.

We woke up, and it was on. The technology is completely enabling. And companies are struggling now to get their applications modernized and transformed to take advantage of all these next-generation capabilities. Why? Because 3rd platform applications create new, more agile business models for companies

All the major players are creating next-generation versions of their applications. They're moving to SaaS, which is basically the cloud. You use to see companies provisioning thousands of Outlook email boxes and running a huge internal email operation. Now you go to Microsoft Azure and run your email from the cloud. SAP, same thing. Oracle, same thing.

And as this happens, it comes back to workload and infrastructure. Do you have the infrastructure to support moving to the cloud and what pieces of your business are you comfortable with moving to the cloud? How do you categorize your workloads: private, public, or hybrid? That’s the question.

In my next post, I’ll discuss the kind of joint business and IT executive governance that’s required to ensure the success of enterprise-scale IT transformation.